Day 53

U2, Trying to Throw Your Arms around the World: "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"

No relevance of the above quote - its just a great line from a great song from a great band. Yay!

Woke up about 8:30 and had done my shower by 9. Played AOEII till about 10.

Watched 'The Hours' after that, while trying a mocha of drinking chocolate and coffee. It was too bitter - I guess I should add sugar next time.
I only watched part of the film till about 11 or so.

Went through lesson 18 of Mandarin Chinese I. It was OK, but I was distracted by Messenger for a significant part of it, so I missed quite a bit of stuff. I still think I'm doing many, many times better than the first time I went through it.

I went for my walk at 12 and got back just after 12:30. I cut it short, cos it was quite hot - and I thought a slight change of route would be better. So it was probably about 2/3 the usual distance - I didn't go down to Gordon street, but came back along Karella instead.

I then was hungry enough for lunch, so had that while watching the rest of 'The Hours'. I was not impressed by the film, and I find it hard to figure out while Nicole Kidman was singled out for best actress - I actually think both Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore did a better job - Nicole didn't really even have enough scenes to tell if her acting was good - save maybe the outburst on the train platform. My main argument was that it was essentially three different films, and the constant switching between was worse than, say, how the editor of 1 & 2 Kings put his stuff together. Save the one time when Nicole wrote the words in 1923, Julianne read the words in 1951 and Meryl acted out the words in 2001 - I really had problems seeing any sort of definitive relationship. Maybe if I had read the book..... But it has no interest for me now.

I then went through lecture 3 of week 11. It was all about interpreting Daniel as 'apocalyptic' literature instead of 'prophetic' - which is confusing due to most people, myself included, thinking that 'apocalyptic' means the same as, say, 'armageddon', when it actually means 'reveal hidden truths'. I was of the opinion, myself, that we could still regard Daniel as being 'prophetic' without having to be a dispensational theologist - because, clearly, the text in Daniel and Revelation is not clearly definitive as to what is what, and, thus, we don't have to think that the whore of Babylon is the catholic church, or the pope will be the antichrist, etc, etc, etc.

Played AOEII again after that, till about 5:30. I was getting bored of the Easiest level, so changed the difficulty to Easy instead. And, whoa!, was there a difference. Suddenly I like have to try to defend my people and fight so hard just to claim a bit of land. Its very much a 'build units, advance, advance to far, get destroyed, build units, advance again, secure an area a bit' repeat repetitively.

Went to watch 'Prime' at Garbo. Left at 5:45 for a 7:05 show, with view to having dinner. Got to a restaurant at 6:20, which wasn't enough time, so had to go straight there. The food court was, of course, closed. I ate twisties and drank coke, cos I was starving.
The show was quite good - a nice evening out, like 'Must Love Dogs' - a quite quait romantic type comedy. Though I saw too many references to other films - and there seemed a strangely large amount of racial stereotypes in the show. I got the feeling that there was lots of 'filler' to support the basic idea of 'therapist treating patient dating son' thing. And by far the greatest comedic moments was in the sessions when Meryl Streep knew but Uma Thurman didn't know.

I have really found that my appetite has suddenly dived away to almost nothing. Though its good - weighed myself at 80kg today, and I haven't been there for a few years, I would say. Gee, if I could ever see a 78 or something, that would be sweet!

And now just a general observation - God makes me cry. I sometimes think it would be a much easier life if I could stay depressed, or angry. But I find I can't go more than a few days from a mountain of problems before, and this is without any actual pro-forma prayers from me (though a lot of internal lamenting), everything just gets, not neccessarily solved (certainly not in the way I'd like), but dealt with, and I can't escape the feeling that He is watching over me. As Smokie Norful sang:
"He is faithful when others are not - He's the surest friend I've got."
Sometimes I'd like to just, as Job's wife said, "curse God and die".
But I can't - "I know too much about Him".

Speaking in the lecture about apocalyptic literature today, and the Hellanic period (don't ask - I'm not sure), I suddenly decided to purchase either a bible with the apocrypha, or, probably, just the apocryphal books on its own. I've had a stigma, and I think many Christians are the same, that these are possibly not 'spirit-inspired' and not as 'holy' as the canonical books in the regular bible, and that is almost undoubtedly true. However, looking at it from the other way, surely these books are more deserving to be read than any other book written by any other person from any other period of time? I mean, maybe 1 Enoch can't be, and is very unlikely to be, attributed to the Enoch of Gensis times. But it would have a far greater chance a being taken for scripture than anything by CS Lewis, Billy Graham, Oswald Chambers, etc.